How fondly I remember my first attempts at digesting N.T. Wright. He seemed to be involved in a conversation with lots of other scholars I'd never heard of about issues I had never considered. It was slow going for sure, madening even at times. I felt like a child stepping into the middle of a grownup conversation trying to figure out what it was all about.
I suspect you will get the hang of it quick enough.
I'm especially intrigued that you enjoyed the section on the five senses of which we can speak of "history". His clarification of these distinct senses and the confusion that comes when we aren't precise, when discussing history, about which of these we are presently considering, was very helpful to me too.
Those five senses are (for our readers, if we still have any):
"First, there is history as event. If we say something is ‘historical’ in this sense, it happened, whether or not we can know or prove that it happened."
"Second, there is history as significant event. Not all events are significant; history, it is often assumed, consists of the ones that are."
"Third, there is history as provable event. To say that something is ‘historical’ in this sense is to say not only that it happened but that we can demonstrate that it happened, on the analogy of mathematics or the so-called hard sciences."
"Fourth, and quite different from the previous three, there is history as writing-about-events-in-the-past. To say that something is ‘historical’ in this sense is to say that it was written about, or perhaps could in principle have been written about."
"Fifth and finally, a combination of (3) and (4) is often found precisely in discussions of Jesus: history as what modern historians can say about a topic. By ‘modern’ I mean ‘post-Enlightenment’, the period in which people have imagined some kind of analogy, even correlation, between history and the hard sciences."
The Scope of the Book
This book is almost 800 pages long, heavily footnoted, and approaches this subject both historically and theologically in unprecedented depth. In the introduction and first chapter N.T. Wright (hereafter NTW) helps set us up for the book's flow of thought.
Part One: Setting the Scene
In this section NTW begins by discussing history in general and setting the stage for his inquiry. He then moves on to an investigation into various views of death, the afterlife and resurrection moving first from the wide spectrum of pagan views during biblical times, then moving on to the Old Testament, and then Post-Biblical Judaism.
Part Two: Resurrection in Paul
Following the previous pattern of moving from the broad to the narrow, in this section NTW begins by discussing what Paul had to say about death, the afterlife, and resurrection in his epistles outside of those to the Corinthians. He then takes two chapters to examing what Paul had to say about these topics within his Corinthian letters, and he finally moves in to examine Paul's own account of experiencing the resurrected Lord on the road to Damascus.
Part Three: Resurrection in Early Christianity (Apart from Paul)
This section begins with an examination of content from the gospels outside of the Easter narratives, then looks at other New Testament writings, then moves on to non-canonical early Christian writings about resurrection, and finally ends with a historical/theological construction of Jesus as Messiah, the worldview of early Christians, and their beliefs about resurrection.
Part Four: The Story of Easter
This section begins with a discussion of some of the challenges inherent in studying the gospel Easter narratives and two of the main options for considering these stories historically. In the following four chapters NTW takes us through the various gospel narratives beginning with Mark and then moving on to Matthew, Luke, and John.
Part Five: Belief, Event and Meaning
In this final section NTW begins to draw conclusions, including the various options available for consideration, their various merits, and the overall challenge the resurrection presents historically. In the next and final chapter, he then discusses the theological development of our understanding of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God from within this historical framework.
I'm still currently working through his very early chapter on death, the afterlife, and resurrection within paganism. I'm enjoying it very much. Not in the way one might enjoy a good novel, but enjoying it still.
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